


Newly Human

by wisdomeagle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - World With Nothing But Shrimp, Community: femslash_minis, Death, F/F, Multiverse, The Key, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-26
Updated: 2005-12-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 12:42:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2025504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/wisdomeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two worlds and their collision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Newly Human

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cdybedahl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cdybedahl/gifts).



For a moment, Anya Jenkins exists in the space between life and death, the blade of a sword sticking out from her back as she gasps and realizes it's her last breath. "Damn."

Dawn Summers pushes past her sister, who freezes in that moment and will never unfreeze. Dawn jumps; her body collides with the energy of a thousand swirling universes and ceases to be her body anymore at all.

(On the mountaintop, Buffy is a statue of a Slayer. In Sunnydale High the Second, Andrew Wells thinks he might be freezing too.)

In the beginning, the Key was without form and void. In the ending, it is that way again.

Dawn feels the intersections between worlds as walls of water. She pushes her hand through one wall and finds herself pawing shrimp, shrimp everywhere, disgusting and slimy. Her other hand touches metal, and a third hand is wet with something sticky -- blood. "Yum." Well, she thinks, she'd rather be _somewhere_ than in the middle of a waterfall and it could be worse. It could be shrimp.

"It could be rabbits."

"What?" Blink. "Anya?"

"You could have chosen a better world, you know. One where you were a princess, or a fairy godmother, or at least somewhat older and less breakable."

"What?"

"Am I not making sense?"

"Not so much, no."

"You could make a wish."

"I'll pass."

"Are you feeling vengeful?"

"I'm feeling dead."

"Doesn't that make you angry? Don't you wish you could hurt the monks who made you human in the first place? Don't you wish...?"

"I'm not stupid, you know. I'm fifteen."

"I was stupid when I was fifteen too. There's no harm in it. You're easily controlled by your emotions, and you don't yet know it's unwise to have office romances."

"Office romances?"

"Forget that. Let's make a better world."

Dawn just wants her old world back. "I wish none of this happened. I wish I was human."

They close their eyes. They open them. Everything's the same as never.

"You aren't human. You can't be human. It's like wishing that I were stupid, or that Xander was butch. Some things mis-align reality."

"So we can't have a perfect world. Figures, huh?"

"The multiverse is extremely unfair. It's up to us to insert a little justice into the boundaries."

++

One morning Xander wakes up alone.

One night Buffy drops a stake that's too heavy for her anymore.

Anya and Dawn fold their legs into pretzels and do a spell, just like Willow and Tara used to, sexy and too heavy for them. The chanting turns to a deadly squeal and the candle they've lit sets the world on fire. The conflagration devours everything.

"Look what we made," Dawn says, in awe.

"It's better this way," Anya tells her. "The world's less confusing when it's all in ruins."

"Are we living here now? In this world? Where Xander and Buffy don't know we're alive? I don't think this world's any better than the one we left behind."

"It doesn't really matter what _this_ world is. It only matters that we're here."

"So now what?"

"Now we make the best of it," Anya says, and Dawn doesn't feel the age difference anymore. So what if she's hideously old, if the green energy under her skin can sometimes end the world? Who cares if Anya's newly human body is older than Dawn's? They're both fake bodies anyhow. It doesn't matter.

She kisses Anya, because doing spells makes you feel like kissing, because there's rubble everywhere; the world is ending and they've caused it, and she feels light and free. There's nothing to worry about anymore.

Anya's innocent at kissing girls, and Dawn's surprised to find that her hands are cold.

"The world I came from; it's not your world."

"I know."

"You died instead of Buffy. That was brave of you."

"I know," Dawn says. So cold. She puts her hands in Anya's, and Anya holds them to her breasts. It will be warm for a minute, with the fire they've made.

It's warm when she tastes Anya, warm when she brushes hands and lips against her clit. She feels warm and old and knowledgeable when Anya shrieks in surprise, some language Dawn doesn't know.

She could learn languages, all the tongues ever spoken, demon and human. She'd understand everyone then, and no one could keep secrets from her.

Or she could lean back and let Anya kiss her breasts and her sex, make her feel warm and young and delicious.

"This is the world we made," Anya says, and Dawn comes.

It's wonderful.


End file.
